The Unofficial Blog Of The Dirty Old Men - Bench Racing, Motorcycle Bending, And Beer Drinking Association. The D.O.M. club enjoys safe, family-orientated fun in the desert, and respects the environment. Despite the name of the club, it doesn't matter if you ride a motorcycle, a quad, or a sand rail; and it doesn't matter if you don't ride at all. It's also okay with DOMers if you don't drink beer, or alcohol of any type.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Thanksgiving Ride At Charlie's Place (part 1)

My apologies to the DOMers and any of the other readers whom I promised a post would be done in a few days. We returned one week ago today and I thought I would be posting pictures of the Thanksgiving ride shortly thereafter. Well, work gets the way of my life sometimes, and life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

Anyway, here’s post # 1 summarizing this year’s Thanksgiving D.O.M. ride to Charlie’s Place. We were originally planning on leaving Wed. 11-22. Both Laura and I took this as a vacation day. However, Nina didn’t want to miss out on the Thanksgiving feast at her school, and Brady had something special going on at his school too. Besides, I don’t like pulling the kids out of school for recreation purposes. Yeah, I know, I’m no fun.

So we left Thursday morning at 7:30 a.m. Only a half-hour off of our target, and that’s not bad given our track record. I thought we would beat the traffic, but things slowed down on the 15 just past the 210. Once we passed the construction zone at the bottom of the Cajon Pass everything moved along much better. This was the first trip pulling the trailer with our new truck. Wow, what a difference! I think we were going 55 mph up the pass instead of 35 mph, and I made it all the way to Charlie’s Place on just over a half a tank.

Once at the top of the pass, not far beyond where the 395 splits from the 15, we heard a loud pop! There went another trailer tire. This was the 4th blowout we’ve had. What a pain in the ass. Luckily for us we were on a flat open portion of road with a large shoulder. Here’s a picture of the tire after I removed it:

This rest of the trip (and the whole weekend for that matter) was much better. We had great weather – no wind, warm daytime temperatures, and no rain. Warm to me means I was able to wear a shirt without a jacket or a sweatshirt during most of the day. Obviously it was cold in the morning and colder at night. I got to ride a lot too, although Laura and I only took one ride together by ourselves. The other rides I went on were with different small groups. Here I am right after returning from Randsburg on Fri. afternoon:Here’s Brady (on Laura’s quad) with his friend Joey. I think this picture was taken before we left for Randsburg, as Joey is suited up. Joey rode their quad to Randsburg, and Joey’s sister Amanda rode their quad back from Randsburg.Here’s Brady again, and this time Nina is pictured. She doesn’t ride yet, and I need to do something about that. Well at least she’s got some riding clothes.Here I am again right after returning from a ride with some of the guys. This time we went across Trona Rd. to the trail that loops around like a race track. It would make a great scrambles course. We finished up our run at the top of a hill that overlooks our camp. That’s when one of the guys noticed my tire was flat. (I thought I was done with flat tires the day before). Anyway, I made it back. See how happy I look:More pictures on my next post. DOMers – if you want to leave a comment, click on the link below that says Dirty Old coMments. You don’t need an account; you can sign in as anonymous then type your name in the comment box after your comment.